


quoth the raven

by violentdarlings



Category: Maleficent (2014)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, POV Diaval, Ravens being ravens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 13:07:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5929531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violentdarlings/pseuds/violentdarlings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maleficent, Diaval, and the five stages of grief.</p>
            </blockquote>





	quoth the raven

**_Denial (The King Takes A Bride)_ **

 

It is shortly after the king marries. Diaval returns to his mistress to find her languid and lazy, twined around a tree as if willing to become one with its twisted bark. He lands on a nearby stone and croaks, and she flicks her fingers daintily; bone and cartilage twists and crumples, and he becomes a man. It is still new, this strange form, but he can hardly make his reports as a raven, however expressive he might be with croaks and caws. So he wears the human shape, the solid bones weighing him down to the earth. The human clothes she has witched to stay on him through the change, and he is clean, at least, unlike the first time she took from him his feathers.

“What news from the castle?” his mistress asks, sliding down from her perch. Diaval finds that his breath has caught in his throat and his mouth will not form these clumsy human words. “Do get on with it,” she drawls, her staff in one hand, and he gulps.

“The King – that is to say, Stefan –”

“Yes?” she questions, voice as soft as silk and as dangerous as a naked blade. “What of him?” She catches his gaze with her eyes, as bright and cold as new steel, and he shudders.

“He has taken… a wife.” For a long time, the moors around them are silent but for the drip of water and the rustle of greenery against stone. Clouds begin to roll in, far too fast to be natural, and the little creatures of the land find a place to hide. They are becoming all too familiar with their lady’s mercurial moods.

“I see.” Maleficent’s voice betrays nothing.

“If that is all?” he queries. Any unnecessary moment spent in human form is a moment too long. Maleficent hums deep in her throat.

“One question.” He half turns, awaiting instruction. His mistress touches her mouth thoughtfully, her eyes cloudy and deep in the past. Maleficent is clearly in another place. He hopes it’s nice there.

“Mistress?” Her eyes flick to his.

“Do you think me beautiful, Diaval?” she asks, her gaze back on the horizon, the faraway castle in the distance. Diaval blinks. He can honestly say the question has never occurred to him. After all, she is not a raven. She is not his kind.

“By the standards of yer kin, I suppose so, Mistress,” he finally replies. There is a soft sigh from Maleficent.

“Explain.”

“Well, ye have no glossy black feathers, nor strong beak to build a nest, nor wings to –” Diaval shuts his mouth abruptly. He is no clever creature, but he knows an ancient wound when he sees one. And he has seen, the deep scarlet furrows where his mistress’ wings had once been. Were he human, he thinks the phrase would be ‘to put his foot in it’. As it is, his claw will have to suffice.

“No wings indeed,” says his mistress, a faint tremor in her voice, and Diaval does not like it one bit. Dark and stern he can handle, but not so this pale stranger with her trembling lips. Diaval knows only one way to remedy it. He has seen how the humans show that they find one another comely, and surely it can only help more than hurt.

Quickly, before Maleficent can strike him back, he kisses her crimson mouth. It lasts only a moment, but it is enough to have him jumping away, the better to be far from her if she takes it ill.

But his mistress is standing still as though he has wrought her of stone. “What by the stars did you do that for?” she asks after a long silence, and Diaval lowers his gaze to the ground. If she is to kill him, he would prefer to not see the gather of green light in her hand, the colour it always is when she works her dark magic.

“I dunno, Mistress. Is that not how yer kind say I like ye?” he asks, still processing the new information. Her lips are soft, but then, so are his, in this form. All this business of _kissing_ may require further consideration. He can feel the heat of Maleficent’s gaze on him.

“My kind?” she asks. Diaval shrugs, still eyeing his bare, muddy feet. So indelicate, these human limbs, compared to his multitalented claws and his glorious wings.

“Two leggers, Mistress.” She flinches as though he has struck her. But it is nothing more than the truth.

“Quite so. Keep an eye on the king for me. You are dismissed.” With a flick of her hand, he is shrinking, warping, changing back into the form he craves with every breath of the other. Croaking triumphantly, he soars around the clearing thrice before landing on a stump. Maleficent has quite forgotten him. She sits surrounded by greenery, her hands loose in her lap, her shoulders twitching in a parody of flight. He pities her, but he would never dare say so. Yet he pities every creature not born to flight. To have wings, and to have them torn from you – he can imagine no greater horror.

“He said he loved me once, you know.” His mistress’ voice is dreamy and far off and for once, whether man or raven, Diaval has nothing to say.

He knows it is not meant for him.

 

**_Anger (The King launches another attack on the moors.)_ **

 

She is the darkness of the oncoming storm, the wrath in the clouds and the war in the sea: Diaval has seen many beauties, as the raven flies, but none such as this dark faerie with her missing wings.

Today the rage is hot in his mistress; she strides back and forth along the beaten earth before her throne, shoulders twitching as though any moment she may yet take flight. Diaval was a bird before he was a man; even now, the clothes chafe his skin and his hands seem fumbling and clumsy when compared to his splendid wings. Were his mistress to chain him in human form, he might yet run mad.

His mistress has a bad habit of shrieking when she is vexed; she is rather like his kin in that sense. She paces and shouts; sometimes, he does not understand her words.

“How dare he,” she says, when the formless howls resolve themselves into words once more. “To attack me – after what he _wrought_ –”

She screams long and loud; he cannot bear it. Nor can he bear the answering shrieks of his wing-kin in the trees, the little ones shivering in the nests, paralytic with fear.

“Mistress!” he says, pulling her round to face him, his hand an inch from the corded scar tissue of her lost glory, and he does the kissing thing again.

He seeks only to silence her audible agony, but it has an entirely different effect. His mistress makes a noise of longing and buries her hand in his head-feathers – no, hair, it is called. This kissing business is very strange, he decides, but two leggers seem to like it well enough. And, well, he doesn’t mind it, really. As long as he’s only kissing his mistress.

Maleficent. He supposes he should call her by her proper name, if he is to be engaging in mating behaviour with her. This is how the humans begin their courtship dance, he remembers. Her lips part and on pure (human) instinct, he parts his own to touch his tongue to hers. Somehow, his clumsy human hands have taken her by the waist, curling his thumbs into the sharp press of where her bones can be felt beneath her skin.

He removes his lips from hers, and says firmly, “You are frightening the nestlings in the great oak.” Maleficent does not seem to be paying attention: one hand has come up to touch her mouth.

“Tell me why I should not turn you into a worm for taking liberties with my person,” she snaps, but her voice is mercifully lowered. Diaval lifts an eyebrow. Eyebrows, he has found, are one of the few fun parts of being a human.

“The nestlings were afraid,” he repeats. “I wanted you to quiet. Was it not effective?”

“It was… effective,” Maleficent replies, her voice a trifle unsteady. “Very much so. Take your leave, Diaval.” There is golden magic around him, and change, and he is not so long at this to be used to it, or to not feel that involuntary surge of relief at being back in his true form. He flutters away to settle in the great oak, cawing to his wing-kin. _Safe now. Little ones safe._ He peers into the nest and feels a sharp stab of pain for the loss of his own young.

The mother bird perches beside him on the branch. _Go now,_ she says. _Not welcome. Witch loud._

_Witch loud_ , he agrees, and takes to the sky.

 

**_Bargaining (Maleficent attempts to heal her wings.)_ **

 

He finds his mistress bare to the waist, the ruined stubs of her wing-joints open to the world. He perches on a branch and observes her. Her hands are heavy with her golden magic, and she is twisting violently to see her back in a pool of clear water. “Heal,” she orders, and the power drifts from her fingertips to the scars on her skin. The magic swirls around the mutilated areas, ebbing and flowing around the wounds, but it melts away on contact. His mistress sighs, and vanishes the remaining power with a snap of her fingertips.

“Wretched iron,” she rasps. Diaval makes a curious chirp, and she turns around in a flash. “Diaval!” she scolds, reaching quickly for the top of her gown. She flicks her fingers at him, and the branch groans as he takes his human form. He jumps down.

“Mistress.”

“Did no one ever inform you of the absolute rudeness of spying on a half-naked female?” she asks tartly. Diaval shrugs.

“No, Mistress.” That takes the wind out of her sails, and Maleficent ceases in attempting to redress, staring at him in astonishment. He takes in the sight. Her skin is white and clear, like the skin of her face. But in comparison to his own (strange human chest), hers is very different.

“What are they?” he asks in interest, nodding to the protrusions on her chest. Her brow wrinkles.

“You truly have no comprehension?” she inquires, incredulity writ on her lovely face. Diaval nods, and is that a hint of colour in his mistress’s cheeks? “Well, then. They are – that is to say – Diaval!”

He has strode towards her and gently touched the tip of the unfamiliar object. His mistress is crimson now, flustered beyond reason, her hands fluttering uselessly at her sides. “Human women hide these,” he says matter-of-factly. “Are they secret?”

“They are used to feed nestlings,” his mistress replies stiffly. “And in… other things.” She remains perfectly still as he fits his palm to the fullness of the… whatever it is.

“Other things?” he questions. “What are they called?”

“In… lovemaking, Diaval,” his mistress snaps, and that he understands. He tears his hand away as though he has been burned. “They are called breasts.”

“Breasts,” he repeats in stupefaction. Maleficent nods.

“Indeed,” she replies. Diaval eyes her _breasts_ in fascination, and his mistress crosses her arms over her chest, which does absolutely nothing to hide the bounty he is so fascinated by. It occurs to him dimly that he may be crossing some sort of line.

“Do they hurt?” he inquires. Maleficent shakes her head.

“No. Why do you ask?” Diaval points to the objects in question.

“They’ve gone all pointy,” he replies, and his mistress gapes, following his gaze down. For a moment she is completely without motion. “You have very nice breasts when they’re pointy, Mistress,” he adds helpfully, and Maleficent’s head whips up.

“Diaval!” she thunders, and points a finger at him. Bone and cartilage shifts, feathers sprout. He caws indignantly at her and flaps away, taking a perch in a nearby tree, sheltered from her sight by leafy branches.

Maleficent lets her hands fall to the sides, according him another view of her chest. He will have to think further on these new occurrences.

“Of all the nerve,” she says to thin air, and for a long moment his mistress is still. But she soon begins anew the task she was attempting before. Magic swirls from her fingers.

“Please,” she murmurs. “Heal. Please. Gods, I’ll never ask for anything again. But grant me my wings.”

How long he watches her, he cannot tell. Until the night falls down and at long last she dresses and stands, moving like an old woman, her staff in her hand. He flaps down and perches on her shoulder, pressing his beak against one of her horns affectionately.

“Wretched bird,” she tells him, but her tone is kind.

He caws in reply.

 

**_Depression (Aurora.)_ **

 

The girl is beautiful, the king’s daughter, all golden hair and glimmering innocence, as fair as a rose all tangled in briars. Diaval still marks beauty by the standards of his own kind, but it has been years since his mistress made him a man, and he can see the loveliness in humanity now, too. Humans and… _not-humans_ – eyes that glitter with a malice that masks an ancient hurt, curved horns as strong as his own beak, skin as white as the winter snows. The child Aurora is the sweetness of summer and the anticipation of spring, yet more and more he seeks the familiar form of his mistress, as much the child’s opposite as is possible to be.

Diaval flies towards the heart of the Moors as dusk falls. The forbidding shape of the far off castle is just a dot on the horizon, but ever is Diaval glad to put it behind him. Often, when his mistress commands him to spy in raven shape on the workings of the human kingdom, Diaval will stop for an hour or two on the way back, and watch Aurora. The sight of the golden child helps to slough off some of the dirt that he feels accumulating on his soul whenever he is forced to spend time near that ugly castle, with its smithies that belch black smoke into the sky, choking the lungs of his kin amongst wing folk and men alike. It has been long enough, now, that he considers himself at least partly a man, even if he is far more a raven.

Sometimes, if he has seen things that harrow his feathered soul, Diaval will even play with the child, letting her almost catch him before flapping just beyond arms reach. Eventually, he comes close, allows her to stroke him with a gentle finger.

But it is almost dusk, and he must content himself with looking through the window of the cottage as she dines with her faerie protectors, for what good they do. He does not stay long, for all he has no vital news to impart to his mistress. He flies back to the Moors as night falls, because he is raven enough still to dislike being on wing in the night.

His mistress is seated on her woodland throne, and she looks up when Diaval perches on her staff. “Anything to report?” she asks, and Diaval shakes his head before beginning to preen his feathers. Were he in his man form, he might have noticed the hard lines etched into his mistress’s face, marks of torment in her pale skin. But he is less observant as a raven, at least when it comes to the subtleties of the human or faerie form, and weary from the long flight. And so they sit in silence, Diaval preening, Maleficent brooding, until one of them cannot bear to be silent any longer.

“I hate him,” his mistress says suddenly, and Diaval looks up, tilts his head to the side and makes an inquiring squawk. “I hate him, and I hate his dead queen, and I hate their wee beastie.”

To that, Diaval voices a rough caw that amongst ravens means raw incredulity mixed with scornful sarcasm. Diaval’s mistress does not speak the tongue of ravens, but she knows when she is being mocked.

“Quiet,” she orders. “Do you wish to spend your days in a less pleasant form? I could arrange it for you. What would you prefer?”

Diaval flies down to the ground and shifts from foot to foot, his usual signal that he wishes to be transformed. His mistress’s lips thin into a hard line.

“Oh no, you don’t,” she orders him. “Manage as a bird or not at all, my lad.” Diaval lifts his head and screeches in indignation, fluttering to a nearby tree. He is an elder by the standards of ravenkind, for all his human form appears to not have aged at all since that day in the field. He chatters at her furiously in the beautifully varied language of his kin, in chirps and squawks and croaks. _Stop feeling sorry for yourself! So you cannot fly. Dead ravens do not soar on wing, either. At least you have your life._

She does not understand, of course. But she manages half a smile at Diaval’s impassioned tirade. “If I could understand that, I’m sure I would be very offended,” she drawls, and Diaval caws an insult on her ancestors in her general direction. “I do not expect you to understand me either,” she admits. “Ravens do not know envy, do they?”

Perhaps not. But men do, and Diaval remembers, what it is to be a man. And ravens know sorrow, the loss of a wing-brother or sister, the death of a mate, the senseless waste of life when a nestling falls from the nest. He might not comprehend envy, at least not in this form, but Diaval sees sorrow marked on her as plain as the iridescent of her eyes and the glorious curve of her horns. Diaval flaps over to his mistress, settles on her shoulder, and clumsily runs his beak through her hair. It is unbound, for once, and it smells of the leather and cloth she binds it with. He presses his head against her cheek, and chirps as he would to a frightened nestling, the song of the night.

“What would I do without you?” his mistress asks, her shoulders shaking a little with the force of her grief, the wet of her tears falling on his feathered head, and Diaval hopes she never has to find out.

 

**_Acceptance (Wings.)_ **

****

“I will never fly again.” The words shatter the silence. Diaval has been sitting quietly on a branch preening himself, dividing his time between watching the child Aurora in the field far below and attending to his feathers. Diaval tilts his head to the side and caws an inquiring noise; it is a sound that is common to all beasts and birds, and for once needs no translation.

“My wings,” his mistress says, from where she stands at the foot of a great elm in the small clearing tucked into the side of a hill. Far up, the playing girl below cannot see them, although well can they see her. “Even if by some unknown power they could be returned to where they were sundered, Stefan is not fool enough to have kept them intact all of these years. My wings would have been burned the moment the old king died.” For they know now, the bargain Stefan had made to acquire his throne. Many whispers reach the moors, for all they never leave them. “Nor can I regrow them with any power I possess. I will never fly again.”

Diaval does not know what to say. It is a human emotion, this wordlessness. Ravens do not feel the need to speak aloud if they cannot conceive of what to say. Comfort by voice alone is alien to them.

So he does the only thing he knows how to do; flies to his mistress, perches on her shoulder, and squawks at her, nuzzling his dark head to her cheek. There are not words in the tongue of man to describe the things he says, although one day he will try, and almost come close:

_Wing sister, bright love, beauty walks in fields of light, will be your wings until the stars burn out, mother sister lover queen mistress, life is yours this life is yours, wing sister you do not need to fly to be as dear as the dusk and the dawn –_

“I do not understand,” she says, and as her arm raises Diaval instinctively takes flight. He feels the shift take hold of him, now as familiar as breathing, and he twitches his fingers and toes and stands up straight.

“Why’d ye do that, then?” he asks. Usually she is content to leave him his secrets, what few he has; the tongue of his wing kin, and the deep emotions of his heart. But not today. His mistress narrows her eyes, but he is long past fear of her.

“What did you say?” she retorts. Diaval opens his mouth, and then closes it. He repeats this several times, and finally he gives up and caws a rough string of noises that sound weak and strange in his man voice, but are still close enough to what they should sound like that nearby ravens take notice. He smiles at his kin, but the expression dies when he sees his mistress begin to tap one foot slowly.

“Cannot tell ye,” he says. “Got no words for it in the tongue of men.” For a moment he considers showing her as ravens would, but he is a man, now, and must do as men do.

Diaval creeps closer and frames her face with his rough, dirty, calloused hands, and perhaps his mistress has stopped breathing, or maybe it is simply him. He gives her infinite time to pull away before he kisses her, as gently as he knows how. Too much has touched his mistress without her consent; he would not be as a callow human, laying his hands on that which does not want him. He has kissed his mistress in exploration and in desperation, but that was years ago, before the birth of the babe that had softened his dark lady in ways Diaval had not known were possible.

“Mistress,” he says, when he pulls away, lets his hands rest by his sides because the urge to touch her is strong and alien and savage and Diaval does not always know how to be a man. Nor does he recognise his steely mistress in this delicate faerie lass; her lips kiss swollen, her eyes points of light bright enough to dim the sun, the torturous wooden coldness fallen away from her face. She looks younger than he has ever seen her.

“Yes, Diaval?” she asks, her voice lower than usual, but with all of its customary gravity.

“Do ye trust me?” he murmurs, as quiet as the wind through the trees, and waits for her answer. She does not do so in words, but in actions; she nods just once, her eyes averted. It is enough. With all the care in the world, he settles her down on a bed of grass, lays her back against the green. She is pliant under his hands, and it frightens him. It is not like his mistress to be so docile.

When he lifts the hem of her dress, she tenses all over, and something inside Diaval clicks into place. This is not his mistress, here, but the youthful maid that was violated so cruelly by the king. Even in human form Diaval feels the shadow of his wings, and he cannot conceive of a life without them. “I will not hurt ye, Mistress,” he assures her, and surveys the territory before him. The sight of a maiden without her clothes is not unfamiliar to him, for he has seen much both in his life before and his time in Maleficent’s service, but the practical application of what he has seen is new to him. Still, Diaval kisses his mistress’s knee, licks his way up her thigh, and is rewarded by a shudder that seizes her all over.

“What are you doing?” she asks, her voice uneven, and Diaval pauses for a moment to marvel that no one, in her long life, has ever worshipped his mistress as she deserves to be adored.

“Hush,” he tells her, and presses his lips to the slick and sweet of her, loving her with all the man and raven twined together inside of him, and Diaval watches Maleficent _fly_.


End file.
